Organic feed for Broilers

[laurenandtoby]

I guaranty the cost of being treated for cancer is much higher than the premium for organic.

AMEN.​

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

j.luetkemeyer :

I guaranty the cost of being treated for cancer is much higher than the premium for organic.

Why yes the cost of cancer is probably more than the premium on organic foods.

However, the implication that organic food prevents cancer is ridiculous. We have jumpted the shark on this one.​

 

[Bossroo]

Atlargeintheworld...Your grandfather and father sound like they are skeptics of the organic thing. Since you say that you are now a managing partner at your family farm, may I ask how large are the holdings and what crops you raise as well as your sustainable technique practices that are now being proven to your family?

 

[bibliophile birds]

they aren't skeptics of the organics thing so much as they are skeptics of doing things differently than they have been doing it (and especially of taking advice from a 27 yr old girl). most farmers i have met that have been relying on "modern farming practices" are usually that way. it's not that organics don't sound good/feasible to them, it's that, well, it's hard to teach old dogs new tricks...

if it helps, i'm glad to share some info with you. we have two farms: one is about 5,000 acres of farmland in western TN. we use about 1/4 of it for our farming, 1/4 is sharecropped by other farmers, and the other 1/2 is left as grazing for the huge deer populations and as part of a government program where land must be left to sit for 10 years between plantings. we grow corn, wheat, beans, field peas, flax, and switchgrass (which is being used to make biofuels. it's much better than corn because you grow it in the rows between your crops and it takes no additional work other than harvesting it). we also have a small orchard and a small vineyard (for grapes, not wine). and a household garden that the overseer maintains for himself. we have about 300 head of pasture raised cattle there as well. all of this is now pesticide, herbicide, antibiotic and hormone free. like i said, we aren't certified organic because we don't sell much and because we still have lots of stock that was treated with antibiotics and hormones before we switched. i'm hoping that in a year or two we will apply for our certification.

the other farm, the one i live on, is about 3,000 acres in east TN. we're at the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so there isn't all that much "farmland" here. this is primarily our horse farm. we do have a herd of about 20 cows here, all of which are about to move down to the other farm and be replaced by 150 head of certified organic Angus! this is my biggest project yet, and i'm really really excited about it. the long term goal is that this will be the base of our future breeding program.

we have beehives. we've had these for about 15 years. our honey always won ribbons at the Tennessee Valley Fair when i entered it so we're hoping that going organic will only make it that much better. our farm garden here is all organic, of course, and we use intercropping and companion cropping. it's kind of our little test patch for which techniques will work best for the crops on the west farm, which is currently mostly crop rotation with a little intercropping.

and i'm just getting started with my chickens. they're being fed all organic and will soon be turned out to pasture (they are living in the house with me currently). i would love to have true free range, but we have lots of predators, so that doesn't work. instead, their coop is on an old hay trailer and the electric netting is on stakes that all pull up so that the entire structure is easily moved around the farm. free fertilizer that i don't even have to spread myself!

oh, and we make some of our own energy. the east farm is running a lot of hydroelectric off our lake spillway, the west farm has 4 windmills that run generators, and both farms are getting solar panels next year.

 

[AHappychick]

Quote:
that is awesome

 

[dancingbear]

Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay :

j.luetkemeyer :

I guaranty the cost of being treated for cancer is much higher than the premium for organic.

Why yes the cost of cancer is probably more than the premium on organic foods.

However, the implication that organic food prevents cancer is ridiculous. We have jumped the shark on this one.​

No, that's backwards. The implication is that organically grown food doesn't cause cancer. It has been proven that chemical pesticides and herbicides DO cause cancer. So avoiding things that are known to cause cancer will reduce the risk of cancer. For example, a non-smoker might get lung cancer. But the odds of getting lung cancer are much higher for smokers than for non-smokers. I do not say we can prevent all cancer, because there are so many things in the environment you can't avoid, and, there are a lot of things about cancer that simply are not understood yet. Perhaps never will be.

The point of organics is not to guarantee good health, but to reduce risk of disease, and to safeguard the environment for the future. If you are well nourished, and don't consume huge loads of toxins and carcinogens, odds are good you'll be healthier than you would be if you eat lots of processed crap, like white flour, white sugar, and hydrogenated fats, and any vegetable of fruit you do consume was grown in depleted soil, picked green, and was doused with pesticides, fungicides, and grown in fields treated with weed killer.

If you don't dump tons of toxic crap into the soil and the water, the environment will be a safer, healthier one than it will be if you do dump tons of toxic crap into it.

Things that come in bottles and bags marked "POISON" are generally bad for you.

If a thing requires a bunch of cautionary statements on the label, I probably don't want it in my food.​

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

Quote:
And just what are the TONS OF CRAP I spread on my corn, soybean, and hay fields? Please enlighten me.

We sprayed 32 ounces of Round Up per acre on our soybeans. We applied a combination residual and foliar fertilizers, believe me if they were toxic my plants would have died.

Jim

 

[dancingbear]

Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay :

Quote:
And just what are the TONS OF CRAP I spread on my corn, soybean, and hay fields? Please enlighten me.

We sprayed 32 ounces of Round Up per acre on our soybeans. We applied a combination residual and foliar fertilizers, believe me if they were toxic my plants would have died.

Jim

First, I never said that YOU personally, were, in fact, dumping any toxic crap. I said, "IF you do such-and-such...." "You," not meaning you personally, just "you" in hypothetical conversational usage, such as "what would happen if you mixed "X" with "Z" and added it to "Y"?"

Since I don't have any secret cameras watching your place, I have no idea what toxic crap YOU dump on YOUR place, (besides the Round-Up that you just told me about) other than what you tell me right here. I have no idea what your fertilizers are composed of, (presumably not pesticides and fungicides and herbicides, which was what I actually mentioned, not fertilizers) so I can't address that. However, YOU just told me you use Round Up, which is in fact toxic crap, though I know that you and several others will vehemently deny that. I'm just glad you aren't using it in large amounts.​

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

Quote:
Actually you did. Your "you" pronoun applies to a class: Modern Commercial Farmers. Since I am a member of that class you implied that I was dumping "tons of toxic crap" on my farm fields. That is not true. NOR is it true of the thousands of other farmers in the USA.

The facts show that we are producing MORE crops and producer on LESS inputs whether they be labor, fertilizer, or other technologies. No matter how you spin it that is a fact.

And if you looked at the LD 50 and other data you would find that Glyphosate is not the Toxic Crap that you tout it to be.

Jim

 

[Puck-Puck]

For anyone interested, a quick perusal of glyphosate on Wikipedia is quite interesting. It is the active ingredient in Roundup. To give LazyJ his due, it is not the ingredient that seems to be causing the most problems; but Roundup has many other ingredients that do seem to be harmful. Check it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate